Silent Circle and Geeksphone today announced a new Switzerland-based joint venture and its inaugural product - the Blackphone - which is said to be the world's first smartphone placing privacy and control directly in the hands of its users. While the press release stays pretty mum about technical details and features, it's said that the Blackphone is powered by a security-oriented Android build named PrivatOS. The target of Blackphone is a carrier- and vendor-independent smartphone giving individuals and organizations the ability to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure texts, transfer and store files and video chat without compromising user privacy on the device.

The Blackphone is the culmination of several careers' including well known Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP; Javier Agüera and Rodrigo Silva-Ramos co-founders of Geeksphone; Jon Callas, co-founder of PGP Inc. and CTO of Silent Circle and Geeksphone; and Mike Janke, CEO of Silent Circle and former US Navy SEAL.

The Blackphone will be available for pre-order beginning February 24, 2014, at Mobile World Congress but before anyone is going to order one, Silent Circle and Geeksphone might want to put the full specs on the table first. So far, Blackphone's web site is only showing the video above which doesn't tell us too much what potential customers can expect.

Anyway, whatever the Blackphone is or will be, the current discussions in Europe about the NSA activities here might help Blackphone to find its market and who knows, maybe it's even Chancellor Merkel's next business mobile phone?